From the Book

I was amazed to find recently that the Colorforms® I played
with as a child are still popular  even in this age of computer and video
games. In fact, a box of Colorforms is great preparation for any budding artist.
I found them at www.areyougame.com.

Great as the objects in Colorforms are, though, they are not as versatile as
Fireworks objects. For instance, you can't change Colorforms colors with
just a click of a mouse.

Fireworks objects can be filled with colors, textures, patterns, gradients,
and even other Fireworks objects. Even better, once an object has one type of
fill, you can still go back later and change it. Also, unlike the vinyl shapes
in the box of Colorforms, Fireworks objects don't have to be hard-edged
objects. They can have a slight softening or fade applied to their edges.

Creating Basic Fills

Fills are the colors, patterns, and gradients that are applied inside paths.
Perhaps the most basic of fills is a solid color applied inside objects.
Fireworks gives you plenty of places where you can apply a solid fill color.

To apply a solid color fill:

Choose one of the vector drawing tools or select a vector object. The Property
Inspector displays the Fill options .

The Fill
options in the Property Inspector.

Choose Solid from the Fill category menu. This displays the options for
solid fills .

The Fill
category menu lets you choose the type of fill for the object.

Click the Fill Color Well in the Property Inspector to open the Swatches
to pick a color .

Click the Fill
Color Well to select a color from the Swatches panel.

or

Use the Color Mixer to mix a color or click the Color Well in the Color
Mixer.

(For more information on working with the Color Mixer, see Chapter 3,
"Colors.")

or

Click the Color Wells in the Tools panel or Color Mixer to open the Swatches
panel.

or

Choose one of the colors in the Swatches panel.

TIP

Move the eyedropper cursor outside the Swatches panel to choose colors
anywhere on the screen. This allows you to sample colors from other documents,
such as Dreamweaver and Flash pages.

To choose nonWeb-safe colors:

Click the Color icon in one of the Swatches panels
and then choose from the Macintosh Color Picker or the Windows Color dialog
box .

The Windows
Color dialog box (top) and the Macintosh Color Picker (bottom) let
you choose colors other than the Web-safe colors.

TIP

The Color icon is not available in the regular Swatch panel, only the panels
opened through the Color Wells.

In addition to filling an object with a color, you can also set an object to
have no fill. This makes the inside of the object completely transparent .
You can use no fill to show just the outside path of an object. There are many
different places where you can apply no fill to an object.

The difference
between a white fill and a fill of None becomes obvious when the objects appear
over another image.

To set a Fill to None:

Choose one of the vector drawing tools or select a vector object. The Property
Inspector displays the Fill options.

Choose None from the Fill category menu in the Property Inspector .

Choose None from
the Fill options menu in the Property Inspector.

or

With the Fill icon highlighted, click the None icon in the Tools panel .

Click the None
icon in the Tools panel.

or

Click the None icon in the Color Mixer .

Click the
None icon in the Color Mixer panel.

or

Click the None icon in any of the Swatches panels .

Click the None
icon in one of the Swatches panels.

TIP

The None icon is not available in the regular Swatch panel, only the panels
opened through the Color Wells.

When an object has no fill, you must click the edge of the path to select the
object.